I mention the above topics not because it's 11 o'clock in the morning and I am drunk already, but because I'm conducting an experiment with Gmail's compelling in-house advertising system.

This is the one where Google electronically ''reads'' your email exchanges and then broadcasts, to your inbox, ads for certain products from which it feels you might benefit.

Thus, hurricane victims get ads for roofing and insurance, retirees get links to pop-top caravan companies and funeral plans, and any new mother reckless enough to announce her glad tidings via Gmail will immediately disappear under an avalanche of suggestions for prams, scented wipes and cut-price Zoloft.

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The privacy implications of this technique are obvious, and competitor Microsoft recently commenced an aggressive campaign alerting customers to Google's practices; according to a Microsoft survey, 70 per cent of Americans don't know their emails are routinely scanned for advertising purposes.

(One assumes that a correspondingly large group of consumers are also unaware that while horrid Google reads their emails, lovely Microsoft doesn't, hence the campaign.)

Two weeks ago, I filed by email a column which - for reasons too fatuous to recap here - contained the phrase ''weeing on a stick''.

This is the brutality of the algorithm. It doesn't tactfully overlook things like your dandruff problem, your secret obsession with processed cheese or your serial inability to keep a man. What it sees, it analyses, and the result is a constant, implacable character assessment of who you really are, and what you really need.

Sure, it's an invasion of privacy. But it's dirt-cheap psychoanalysis, and who can resist that?

Reading what Google thinks you might be interested in - just like reading the ads that Facebook pushes your way - is confronting, but also weirdly fascinating, in the same way the ''personality testing'' offered by laneway Scientologists is always a tiny bit tempting.

This morning my inbox directed me to a website selling something called the Cat Bib. Enchanted, I clicked through, to find a picture of a grumpy-looking Persian cat wearing what appeared to be a 1970s tie made out of purple Neoprene; apparently, the thing prevents pussy from slaughtering birds, possibly by rendering the predator too humiliated to step outdoors.

It certainly looks like an interesting product, especially if you happen to be an endangered species of honeyeater.

But where did it come from? I don't even have a cat.

Then it hit me. In researching an interview with Craig Emerson, the Minister for So Many Things I Would Blow the Rest of the Word Length Just Listing Them, I had recently reminisced via email with a colleague about the time Emerson took a cardboard cutout of a cat into the House of Representatives.

Bingo! Right, Gmail. Time to test your reflexes.

I drafted two group emails. One to my editors, outlining the virtues of the Cat Bib.

And another to a select group of family and friends, announcing my divorce, approaching fairytale wedding, and struggles with chronic alopecia.

It took a while for Google to incorporate this flurry of disclosures into its assessment.

In the meantime, it hedged by inviting me to consider the merits of studying a TAFE course online, offering a 20 per cent fee discount to ''Study from home at your own pace!''

(Clearly, Google is reading Barry O'Farrell's emails, too.)

I doubled down, sending a further volley of correspondence complaining about my inability to find inexpensive tapware.

Google parried with what looked like a generic offer to refinance my home loan for 5.44 per cent.

Then, about 90 minutes into the experiment - it happened.

I checked my email inbox, and found a banner ad for ''Nutritious Kitten Food''.

So if I have achieved nothing else today, I have at least created a believable imaginary cat that, according to Google's omnivorous databank, lives at my house, driving an infinitesimal kitty-shaped spike in consumer demand, and posing no threat at all to local bird life.

Incidentally, if you visit Google's ''Ads Settings'' page, it will tell you what assumptions it has made about you, according to its records of the websites you like to visit.

This can be confronting, too.

According to Google, I am a 65-year-old female with an interest in politics, Japanese cuisine, eggs, jellies and preserves, and language resources, among other things.

Which gives you an idea of how ridiculously fallible the system is - it doesn't even mention a cat, and it's been nearly three hours.

Annabel Crabb is the host of ABC TV's Kitchen Cabinet. She tweets as @annabelcrabb.

11 comments

"Sure, it's an invasion of privacy."

Sounds good for the non-technical readers, but not very accurate.

Google's software scans emails for keywords and then passes those keywords on to other software to use (in this case, supply keyword-based ads). Your anti-virus software does the same thing, but instead of ads, uses those keywords and patterns to lookup a virus database and flag problems. Your spellchecker looks up keywords and flags them to you with a lovely, squiggly red line; grammar checker then flags its identified problems in green. (Assuming Microsoft Word for the last two examples, but it has become a convention for other software as well.)

No humans are involved in any of the above and all provide benefit. (Just being clear - Google's benefit is indirect - you're getting free email, right? Tip: it's not actually free.)

So ... where's the invasion of privacy?

Commenter

Andrew

Location

Pennant Hills

Date and time

April 28, 2013, 9:09AM

Take comfort at, least for the time being, how bad most software is at really understanding the needs or thoughts of emailers. On the less sanguine side, I recently suffered a visit from federal employees for including the names of two terrorist groups in an email after the Boston bombing.

Commenter

Troppo

Date and time

April 28, 2013, 1:00PM

I would really like to know how Google decided I need ads at top and bottom of Gmail inbox advertising "Frogs house washing." Plus a URL. They have been there for a couple of weeks and I have absolutely no recollection of anything which could have given rise to them. I don't even live in Frog Hollow.

Commenter

sadie

Location

Sydney

Date and time

April 28, 2013, 9:11AM

Easy Annabel stop telling the World what you are doing.

Commenter

srg

Location

nambucca heads

Date and time

April 28, 2013, 9:15AM

Change your email provider?????

Commenter

kitty

Date and time

April 28, 2013, 9:40AM

It just shows you how crap Google is at actually assessing you as a person from your emails. For every one thing it shows you that you actually have a passing interest in, there will be 99 other bits of rubbish that just annoy you if you look. It would take a human reading the emails to determine what that one thing was! It's not Google analysing your correspondance that you should be worried about, it's a human having the ability to search your vast correspondence archive (which can only happen if given permission by a human).

For all the masses of data we generate, it takes a person to really make sense of it, not a machine. The machines make it easy to search, but only a peson can zero in on what's important. The best we've seen from a machine perspective is IBM's Watson, and that is still a long, long way from human congitive abilities!

Commenter

Misha

Location

Tumbi Umbi

Date and time

April 28, 2013, 10:46AM

Keep using Gmail as your email provider - it's good, it's free, but it has a truly horrible user interface. Use Thunderbird as your email client, and accumulate email from your various accounts, including Gmail, so you can read them all in one place. No ads!

Commenter

Tim

Location

Sydney

Date and time

April 28, 2013, 11:00AM

Good advice.

Commenter

Dr Kiwi

Date and time

April 28, 2013, 12:07PM

Just as a finished this article I found an ad for a cat boarding service - hows that for efficient.

Commenter

Puddy

Location

Freshwater

Date and time

April 28, 2013, 1:07PM

Why don't you just get an ad-block type of software and you won't get these ads?